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My bees are ignoring the clover and really working the thyme in my butterfly/bee/whatever grows in sun garden.
Makes me think I should plant my whole yard(the little bit that gets sun) in thyme. Then I won't have to mow! Moss in the shade and thyme in the sun. A maintenance free yard. I am seriously considering putting thyme as a groundcover in the apiary.
Denise

Denise, I've got a thyme plant in the corner of my garden thats 3 yrs old now and is flowering for the first time. I havent noticed any bees on it but I havent really been paying any attention. I hope the bees enjoy it as much as I do. I've been wearing it out cooking with it. Nothing like a big pot of gumbo or stew with a few sprigs thrown in.

I planted some thyme last year that is blooming this year, but the bees are passing that up for the catnip. I hoped they would work the thyme because it has thymol which is supposed to be a good organic anti-microbial and miticide, but oh well. Maybe I'll plant some thyme in a patch out by the bee yard. Maybe they would work it if it were not in close proximity to the herb garden.

These are the same thoughts I have. I walked several miles today looking at tons of clover blossoms and didn't see a honey bee until I saw a boxwood shrub almost in full bloom. I looked around at the other boxwood hedges and they all appear to be behind this one. What I like about the neighbor across the street is he only cuts his boxwood hedges every 5 years so it always gets loaded with blossoms. I love to watch the bees work but they ignore what I plant for them.

To some extent they are a creature of habit. But when a better source comes along I find they jump on it.

Case in point. The bees at my house have been working a sweet clover field for several weeks. Every where you looked there were bees on clover. But about 4 days ago while the field was nearly in peak bloom there were no bees to be seen everywhere. Didn't take long to figure out they were headed off (farther away) to work basswood which had just started to bloom.

Apparently, the bottom line with bees is sugar content in nectar. They will tend to follow the smell and direction of other bee's dancing and smelling of a certain source blossom, but they are more excited about sources that have a higher percentage of sugars. Bees have a very sophisticated system to judge how much sugar is in the nectar they are gathering. They will in fact bypass lesser nectar sources. Basswood like a lot of trees have large nectuaries and possibly a higher pecentage of sugar as opposed to field crops.

My personal opinion is that bees pass up otherwise preferred nectar sources because the sugar levels in the nectar of these plants are temporarily lower. Who knows? ....maybe the plants are not delivering high sucrose levels because of their own lack of nutrition or water. Same thing with maple sugar, some years are great and others so-so. Same trees, different year.

We planted over 2 arces of buckwheat last year and found our honey VERY dark-but we also had 1+ acre of sunflowers and over 3 acres of field peas. I would love to know that the sunflowers and peas were the cause of the dark honey! We have waited this year to plant our garden, buckwheat and peas (because of so much rain) and the honey I am seeing is very light! Anyone else have buckwheat honey? What color was yours?

Pure Buckwheat honey is dark and strong flavored. It does not take much Buckwheat to turn your honey darker.
The final color and flavor of the honey is going to depend all of the nectar sources and their percentage in the final product.

Since many different plants may contribute to a nectar flow, how does one know what the primary plant was that makes up the honey in your hive? When bottling and taking it to market, how can you claim its "Clover" honey or "Tupelo" honey? Or do you just have to say "Wild Flower"?

Denise, we have a lot of thyme on our property, and whenever I haved walked past it lately there have been bees all over it. Another bonus for thyme, if you live somewhere dry, is that once it is established, it is really drought resistant... and you can eat it too!